mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Yes, but there is such a thing as influence and motivation. I.e., perhaps Roman was the guy pushing for zone-read and pistol-type stuff, and Harbaugh said "ok, let's take a look" vs. Harbaugh being the driver of looking at innovative offiensive schemes. Far from clear as to which it is in this case. Hence it's worth asking the question.

Drevno clearly is a superstar with OL play, but what does this mean for the overall offense? Greg Roman was more diversified in his expertise and offensive play-calling. I suspect this means no read-option play at all.

In John U Bacon's book, it was the former players who were the most anti-RR. If Harbaugh were in that camp, he could easily have wanted to snub Rodriguez. A real shame, as it would have helped unite the Michigan family.

It left a bad taste in my mouth that he didn't mention RR. Would have taken a second, and would have done a lot to unite the family. But as JUB has written, the anti-RR faction at Michigan is dominated by ex-players, and perhaps Harbaugh was one of them.

Brian, Harbaugh's strengths are extremely impressive, as you say. Any reason to be concerned about Stanford's defensive performances vs. Oregon, as a proxy for his defenses vs. the read option generally?

This is actually the most interesting and insightful article that has been posted in the last day or two. The author's argument -- that socialist revenue-sharing has leveled the playing field between programs in power conferences, making good coaches more essential -- explains why Michigan has declined in the past 20 years.

Even in the alleged good old days pre-RR, Michigan typically won the conference but failed against top teams from other conferences with better coaches and more innovative schemes. The whole reason we hired RR in the first place -- and why people like me continue to support him -- was to counter that trend.

Empires become decadent when their rulers forget why their empires succeeded in the first place. The JUB-chronicled decadence of Michigan since 2007 is exemplary of that: people in the AD and alumni community undermining coaches simply because they don't like them, etc. Fortunately, Hackett and co. appear to have learned from this experience.

I oppose the economic & political form of communism. Many of my posts make ironic references to Lenin, Mao, etc. for this reason. It's of course important to engage in serious critiques of political communism. But as every good communist knows, mockery is the most dangerous form of political critique.

Not to mention, communist football is the fullest realization of the Hegelian dialectic.

In his latest post, Henson says that QB Josh Rosen, Rivals' #1 overall recruit for 2015, will decommit from UCLA and join Michigan if Harbaugh is hired:

I got another interesting text from a good source that Josh Rosen “is in” if Jim is indeed named the next Head Coach at Michigan. Rosen is a California kid who is committed to UCLA, but sources say he will more than likely be a Wolverine once the search is resolved next week. That is a bit of a surprise to me as Michigan already has a nice prospect in the class, Alex Malzone from Birmingham Brother Rice. I’ll admit, I know next to nothing about recruits, I’m just passing it along from a solid source.

Harbaugh's offense at Stanford was Bo-Mo-Lloyd like, at least in its basic repertoire. Power football, pocket passers, naked bootlegs, etc. But his time in SF has given me hope that Communist Football is not dead in Ann Arbor. Here's an interview in which he lambasts the NFL for rule changes that make the read option harder to run:

I think the main problem is that Harbaugh is unlikely to be able to recruit dual-threat passers, because dual threats are more likely to be attracted to read-option programs like OSU and Oregon, and because Harbaugh is more likely to seek out traditional pro-style QBs. Kaepernick was handed to Harbaugh; has Harbaugh's experience with Kaepernick broadened his horizons in terms of how to run an offense?

The choice of OC will be telling on this front, and there's no evidence that Harbaugh intends to hire a read-option OC (though evidence is thin overall on this front).